Inour 46th issue we reprinted the resolution of the Fifth Congress of
the Bund on the position of the Bund in the R.S.D.L.P., and gave our
opinion of it. The Foreign Committee of the Bund replies at great
length and with great heat in its leaflet of September 9 (22). The
most material part of this angry reply is the following phenomenal
revelation: “In addition to its maximum Rules [sic!],
the Fifth Congress of the Bund also drew up minimum
Rules”; and these minimum Rules are quoted in full, it
being explained in two notes, moreover, that “the rejection of
autonomy” and the demand that other sections of the Party appeal
to the Jewish proletariat only with the sanction of the Bund Central
Committee “must be put forward as an ultimatum”.
Thus decided the Fifth Congress of the Bund.

Charming,is it not? The Bund Congress draws up two sets of Rules
simultaneously, defining simultaneously both its maximum and
minimum desires or demands. The mini mum it prudently (oh, so
prudently!) tucks away in its pocket. Only the maximum is published
(in the leaflet of August 7[20]), and it is publicly
announced, clearly and explicitly, that this maximum draft is
“to be submitted to the Second Congress of the Russian
Social-Democratic Labour Party as the basis for the
discussion [mark that! I of the Bund’s position in the
Party”. The Bund’s opponents, naturally, attack this maximum
with the utmost vehemence, just because it is the maximum, the
“last
word”[1]
of the
trend they condemn. Thereupon, a month later, these people,
without the slightest embarrassment, pull the “minimum out of
their pocket, and add the ominous word:
“ultimatum"!

Thatis a positive last price, not a “last
word”.... Only is it really your last, gentlemen? Perhaps you’ve
got a minimal minimum in another pocket? Perhaps in another month or
so we shall be seeing that?

Wevery much fear that the Bundists do not quite realise all the
“beauty” of this maximum and minimum. Why, how else can
you haggle than by asking an exorbitant price, then knocking off 75
per cent and declaring, “That’s my last price"? Why, is there
any difference between haggling and politics?

Thereis, gentlemen, we make bold to assure you. Firstly, in politics
some parties adhere systematically to certain principles, and
it is indecent to haggle over principles. Secondly, when people who
claim to belong to a party regard certain of their demands as an
ultimatum, that is, as the very condition of their membership in the
party, political honesty requires that they should not conceal the
fact, should not tuck it away “for the time
being” in their pocket, but, on the contrary, should say so
openly and definitely right from the start.

Wehave been preaching these simple truths to the Bundists for a long
time. As early as February (in our 33rd issue) we wrote that it was
stupid and unbefitting to play hide-and-seek, and that the Bund had
acted separately (in issuing its statement about the Organising
Committee) because it wanted to act as a contracting party
and present terms to the Party as a
whole.* [* See present edition, Vol. 6,
pp. 310-25.—Ed.] For this opinion
we were ,drenched with a whole bucketful of specifically Bundist (one
might with equal justice say, specifically fish-market) abuse, yet
events have now shown that we were right. It is indeed as a
contracting party that the Bund comes forward in the
decisions of its Fifth Congress, presenting outright ultimatums to
the Party as a whole! That is just what we have been trying all along
to get the Bundists to admit, by showing that it followed inevitably
from the position they had taken up; they angrily protested, dodged
and wriggled, but in the end were obliged after all to produce their
minimum

Thatis funny; but funnier still is the fact that the Bund continues
to wriggle even now, continues to talk about the “falsity”
of “Iskra’s old, generally known fabrication to the
effect that the Bund wants to form a federal alliance with the Russian
Party”. That is a lying fabrication, it claims, because
Paragraph I of the Rules proposed by the Bund distinctly
speaks of its desire to be a component element of the Party, not to
form an alliance with it.

Verygood, gentlemen! But does not this same paragraph say that
the Bund is a federated component of the Party? Don’t
your maximum Rules refer throughout to contracting parties?
Don’t the minimum Rules speak of an ultimatum, and make
any change in their “fundamental clauses” contingent
on the mutual consent of the component elements of the
Party, neither the local nor the district organisations,
moreover, being recognised as such for this purpose? You
yourselves say that neither local nor district organisations,
but only “integral elements of the same nature as the
Bund” can be contracting parties. You yourselves mention
by way of example that “the Polish, Lithuanian or Lettish
Social-Democrats” might be regarded as such integral
elements, “if they belonged to the Party”,
as you sensibly add. But what if they do not belong to the
Party? And what if the federation of national organisations
which you find desirable is found undesirable and emphatically
rejected by all the rest of the Party? You know very well that
that is how matters stand; you yourselves expressly say you no
longer demand that the whole Party be built on the basis of a
federation of nationalities. To whom, then, are you
addressing your ultimatum? Is it not obvious that you
are addressing it to the whole Party, minus the Bund? Instead of
convicting Iskra of a lying fabrication, you only
convict yourselves of a minimum of logic in your subterfuges.

Butlook, the Bundists protest, in our minimum Rules we have
even deleted the federation demand! This deletion of the
“dreadful” word is indeed the most interesting
episode in the famous transition from maximum to
minimum. Nowhere
else, perhaps, has the Bund’s unconcern for principles betrayed
itself so na ively. You are dogmatists, hope less dogmatists, we
are told; nothing in the world will induce you to recognise the
federal “principle of organisa tion”. We, on the
other hand, are not dogmatists, we “put the matter on a
purely practical footing”. Is it some prin ciple you don’t
like? Queer fellows! Why, then we’ll do with out any principle
at all, we’ll “formulate Paragraph I in such a way that it
shall not be a declaration of a definite principle of
organisation”. “The crux of the matter does not lie
in the statement of principle prefacing the Rules, but in their
concrete clauses, which are derived from an examination of the
needs of the Jewish working-class movement, on the one hand, and
of the movement as a whole, on the other” (leaflet of
September 9 [221, p. 1).

Thenaïveté of this argument is so delightful that
one just wants to
hug the author. The Bundist seriously believes that it is only certain
dreadful words the dogmatists fear, and so he decides that if these
words are deleted, the dogmatist will see nothing objectionable in
the concrete clauses themselves! And so he toils in the sweat of his
brow, draws up his maximum Rules, gets in reserve his minimum Rules
(against a rainy day), draws up ultimatum No. I, ultimatum
No. 2.... Oleum et operam perdidisti, amice!—you are
wasting time and effort, my friend. In spite of the cunning (oh,
wonderfully cunning!) removal of the label, the dogmatist detects the
federal principle in the minimum’s “concrete clauses”
too. That principle is to be seen in the demand that a component
element of the Party should not be limited by any territorial bounds,
and in the claim to be the
“sole”[2]
representative of the Jewish proletariat, and in the demand for
“representation on the Party Central Committee; in the
denial to the Party Central Committee of the right to
communicate with any part of the Bund without the consent of the
Bund Central Committee; in the demand that fundamental clauses
should not be changed without the consent of the component
elements of the Party.

No,gentlemen, the crux of this matter of the Bund’s position in the
Party does lie in the declaration of a definite principle of
organisation, and not at all in the concrete clauses. The crux of the
matter is a choice of ways. Is the historically evolved
isolation of the Bund to be legitimised, or is it to be rejected on
principle, and the course openly, definitely, firmly and honestly
adopted of ever closer and closer union and fusion with the Party as a
whole? Is this isolation to be preserved, or a turn made towards
fusion? That is the question.

Theanswer will depend on the free will of the Bund, for, as we
already said in our 33rd issue, “love cannot be
forced”. If you want to move towards fusion, you
will reject federation and accept autonomy. You will understand
in that case that autonomy guarantees a process of fusion so
gradual that the reorganisation would proceed with the minimum
of dislocation, and in such a way, moreover, that the Jewish
working-class movement would lose nothing and gain everything by
this reorganisation and fusion.

Ifyou do not want to move towards fusion, you will stand for
federation (whether in its maximum or minimum form, whether with
or without a declaration); you will be afraid of being
“steam-rollered”, you will turn the regrettable
isolation of the Bund into a fetish, and will cry that the
abolition of this isolation means the destruction of the Bund;
you
will begin to seek grounds justifying your isolation, and in
this search will now grasp at the Zionist idea of a Jewish
“nation”, now resort to demagogy and
scurrilities.

Federalismcan be justified theoretically only on the basis of
nationalist ideas, and it would be strange if we had to prove to the
Bundists that it was no mere accident that the declaration of
federalism was made at that very Fourth Congress which proclaimed the
Jews to be a nation.

Theidea of fusion can be discredited in practice only by
inciting politically unenlightened and timid people against the
“monstrous”,
“Arakcheyev”[3]
organisational
plan of Iskra, which supposedly wants to
“regiment” the commit tees and not allow them to
“take a single step without orders from above”. How
terrible! We have no doubt that all the committees will now
hasten to revolt against the iron glove, the Arakcheyev fist,
etc.... But where, gentlemen, did you get your information about
this brutal organisational plan? From our literature? Then why
not quote it? Or from the tales of idle Party gossips, who can
tell you on the very best authority all, absolutely all the
details regarding this Arakcheyevism? The latter supposition is
probably the more correct, for even people with a minimum of
logic could hardly confuse the very necessary demand that the
Central Commit tee should “be able to communicate
with every Party
member"* [* See present edition, Vol. 6,
p. 487.—Ed.]
with the patently scurrilous bugbear
that the Central Committee will “do everything
itself” and “lay down the law on
everything”. Or another thing: what is this nonsense that
“between the periphery and the centre” there will be
“lose
Organisationen"?** [** Loose, broad
organisations
.—Ed.]
We can guess: our worthy
Bundists heard something, but did not know what it was all
about. We shall have to explain it to them at length on some
suit able occasion.

But,worst of all, it is not only the local committees that will
have to revolt, but the Central Committee too. True, it has not
been born
yet,[4] but the
gossips know for certain not
only the birthday of the infant but its whole subsequent
career. It appears it will be a Central Committee
“directed by a group of writers”. Such a
tried and cheap method of warfare, this. The Bundists are not
the first to employ it and most likely will not be the last. To
convict this Central Committee, or the Organising Committee, of
any mistake,you have to find proof.To convict people of not
acting as they themselves think necessary, but of being
directed by others, you must have the courage to bring
charges openly and be ready to answer for them to the whole
Party! All that is too dear, too dear in every respect. Gossips’
tales, on the other hand, are cheap.... And perhaps the fish will
bite. It is not pleasant, after all, to be considered a man (or
institution) who is “directed”, who is in leading strings,
who is a pawn, a creature, a puppet of Iskra.... Our poor,
poor future Central Committee! Where will it find a protector against
the Arakcheyev yoke? Perhaps in the “independently acting”
Bundists, those strangers to all “suspiciousness"?

Notes

[1]
By the way, it is extremely characteristic of the Bund’s methods of
controversy that this expression called down on our heads the
particular wrath of Posledniye
Izvestia.[5]
Why the last word, it demanded, when
it (the demand for federation) had been uttered over two years
ago? Iskra was counting on the short memory of its
readers!... Calm yourselves, calm yourselves, gentlemen! The author
of the article called your maximum Rules the last word because
that word was uttered two days (approximately) before
No. 46 of Iskra, and not two years ago. —Lenin

[2]
“This word is of no significance,” the Bund now assures us.
Strange! Why should a word that has no significance have been inserted
in both minimum and maximum? In the Russian language the word has a
perfectly definite significance. What it signifies in the present
instance is a “declaration” of both federalism and
nationalism. We would advise the Bundists, who can see no connection
between nationalism and federation, to ponder this point.
—Lenin

[5]Posledniye Izvestia (News)—a periodical bulletin issued by
the Foreign Committee of the Bund from 1901 to 1906.

[3]Arakcheyev, A. A. (1769-1834)—the powerful favourite of Paul
I and Alexander I, whose name is associated with a period of crushing police
tyranny and jackboot rule.

[4]
Lenin says that the Central Committee “has not been born
yet” out of secrecy considerations; actually, the Central
Committee already existed—it had been elected at the Second Party
Congress on August 7 (20), 1903.